Rotten Candies
by paired discontinuity
Summary: [Part of Acid Holes, XW AU!] It's been too many times, too many attempts. She's getting closer, she thinks, to saving Kotone. But she's rotting away in the process and Kotone's rotting away waiting for her - but she doesn't care. She'll do it again and again anyway. And something will give. Warnings inside!


_Warnings from Poison is the Colour Red apply here as well, plus a few extras: namely creepy black eyes, bodily fluids, possible domestic violence and hints towards incest._

* * *

 **Rotten Candies  
** _1: the slumbering princess_

It's a new world and she's playing hide and seek again. Kotone sleeps, chin on her shoulder and arms in a loose choke hold around her neck. Too weak, really, but even if she'd been holding on with all her strength, she was no match for him. Neither of them were any match for him, but that wasn't going to stop her from trying to be.

And slowly, ever so slowly, she closes the gap. Hides a little longer. Fights a little longer. Still no match, but one day she will be and damn Kudou Taiki if he (or she as she calls herself; Nene, for her part, doesn't really care since they aren't friends at all) throws a wrench into the powers that gave her infinite second chances before she does.

She took a pretty big risk after the first few tries, leaving him to his own devices. It took a few worlds to pick up that his red-haired friend almost always called her "they" and the other boy was always tripping over the pronoun - and why should it have occured to her earlier at all? The boy was ever so awkward with her as well. The clumsy butler at the door who tried to greet a princess and simply wound up tongue-tied at the end. But there were no princesses - except maybe the red-haired girl entertaining dreams no-one else could.

Maybe Nene had had her own such dreams once upon a time. Maybe Kotone had had those dreams. Before their family portrait sprouted a nice big tear. And before they stumbled into this whirlpool they can't seem to make their way out of.

Kotone's eyes are closed. Nene lifts a lid. Brown again.

They've snapped open as pinpricks of black in a white sea altogether too often. They burn through her own closed eyelids when she sleeps and that stare is stronger every time, and the churning in her stomach and the chyme that rises up her throat is stronger too. And why not? Her stomach has had countless repeats to create the perfect cuisine and yet it still hasn't gotten there. She throws up from time to time but she's not asleep yet. Orexin still sings a song in her brain. And silence too. The calm before the storm that begins every time she's thrown back in time and goes on until the spring winds back down again -

One day, she'll smash that damn music box into pieces. But before that, she has a witch's curse to break.

* * *

Kotone's eyes are black. Black like the bruise on their mother's cheek when their father throws her out. Black like the stuff that bled out of their grandmother's backside before she died: that foul smelling stuff that clogged up the toilet bowl and their noses as well. Black like the night when there's no moon nor stars in the sky - and Kotone would ask, ask where the stars go since they don't wax and wane like the moon and the sun. And she can't answer that. She's clever in some ways, sometimes, but not in astrophysics and it's such a useless thing so she doesn't care to be, either. The only stars she cares about are the ones her opponents see when she's knocked them on the head.

But Kotone is interested in flightier things, and with Nene to chase away the real demons, she can afford to be. Or that was how the tale should have gone. Maybe that was how the original tale went, before it was rewritten. But no longer. The flighty fairy who wears a dress of simple white silk lies in slumber after the witch's wheel pricks her, and wakes up a witch because her prince in shining armour can't break the curse no matter how many tries she's had.

And surely it's not something as stupid as that a girl can't be a prince in shining armour. And this is the price. The hollow in Kotone's eyes where light and life should dance, and that hollow is a never-ending pit that swallows her. A pit of despair. And that laugh that echoes after that is the ballade sung over her grave, the funeral match that sees her buried under dirt and stone...

And then there's the next chance she's woken up in, vomitus clinging to a puddle of soil and her tongue and teeth and she can only be grateful that humans have a far poorer sense of smell than a dog.

* * *

Ignorance was bliss, but she can't afford to have that bliss. Each cycle tells her something new, teaches her something new. It's a puzzle with far too many pieces and she doesn't even know how many pieces there are, let alone how many of them she's got. She doesn't know if she's put them together the right way around until the pieces are needed elsewhere, or they suddenly don't fit right. She can't see the whole picture and she won't be able to see the whole picture until she has all the pieces and they've been put in their right places and it's exhausting, to work again and again and throw out all the false pieces that crop up along the way as well.

Pieces like Kudou Taiki, who's fighting for something too and in all the cycles so far, she hasn't worked out what that something is. Hiding something, maybe. She certainly has cause. But it seems something more. Something stronger, that shines as bright and as dark as her and her sister's hearts - the heart she's willing to blacken to save the other's light... And yet it never works. Goes dark anyway. She fails and wakes up at the start again. Two months in eternity and the Kudou Taiki she meets in each of them is somehow different, no matter how early or late that necessary meeting is.

If only they get along. They don't. They've tried it: different ways but the only one Nene loves is her little sister and Taiki, for all the walls around her heart, is so painfully naive that a little scratch from Nene's long nails can leave a barb that countless repeats haven't managed to rip back out...

But that suits her. She doesn't need Kudou Taiki to save her sister and she'll never help. Not for this. She just needs the rest of the puzzle. And she'll get those pieces. Slowly, painfully...but she'll get them.

And then the kiss she'll plant on Kotone's lips will be the magic one, to wake the princess from her slumber and the opening song to their happily ever after.

* * *

The castle is still dark. That doesn't matter. She can make out the outline of every brick and the path of every crack in the wall, and Kotone huddled on her throne as the centrepiece. She's Sleeping Beauty right now: the prince who lies in slumber until her prince can fight through the thorns and the witch and reawaken her and if she has to wait too long, her shining bright heart will rot away and become black, and her eyes will turn back as well.

Two months left. Let the clock start again.

* * *

 _ **A/N:** Written for the Halloween Trick or Treat Bag, d_ _ay 4 - kit kat: write a fic that is a pair to another participant's fic (this is the pair to Aiko's Poison is the Colour Red (both are posted on this account)); the Mega-Prompts Challenge, writing prompts #029 - multichapter with each chapter between 1000 and 3000 words; and the Character spin-off Challenge_ _(Nene has been studying mixed martial arts since she was very young and it is terrifying to be on the receiving end, the sibling's father divorced their mother for reasons unknown to them, Nene has a mild case of PTSD due to her time with DarkKnightmon, Nene is fond of marshmallows and marshmallow candy, a lot of training with Monitamons has sharpened her senses because if it's nigh impossible to find the TV screen ninjas on a normal day, you have to compensate)_


End file.
